


the water stays deep because you don't deserve the shore

by ShameGame



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Anxiety, Cognitive Dissonance, Drowning, Injury, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Near Death Experiences, Selectively Mute Link, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Violence, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-18 00:53:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14842481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShameGame/pseuds/ShameGame
Summary: Don’t go searching for things you have no intention of finding. This is doubly true for sword-bearing Hylians named Link who seem to have a love-hate relationship with the concept of self-preservation.But Link persists, and he discovers, and sure enough, things go lopsided because the ocean isnota good place for learning life lessons.It’s not a good place for recovering from life-threatening scenarios either, but at least on that front, Link bumps into a resource....A big, red resource.





	1. three knocks

The rule has never been stated explicitly, but it sits square on the tongue of every crew member aboard the vessel:

If you waste your breath on putting a name to danger’s face, fate will grab you off guard and drown you in the murky saltwater.

So no one speaks of it. Even when they feel the subtle bumps and scrapes against bottom of the boat despite being out in the deep sea.

Whatever toys with them stays beneath the surface of the crew’s conversations and gestures, though. Weird aversions to working by the ship’s railing. Unprompted triple-checks on the armory. Casual, but not-so-relevant questions asked out of the blue, usually along the lines of, “How well can you swim?”

Link has only fared the sea a time or two throughout his service to the Princess. He’s suffered from the sunburns and the sea salt before, but this experience is different in how it stretches out into what feels like infinity--and time has never been a friend of his. The tension on the boat is unbearable in how he can’t crawl away from it as per usual, so he ignores it instead. He walks the deck and picks up the neglected chores and the others smirk at his clumsy hands. It doesn’t matter if he’s a swordsman, not a sailor. His reputation as Zelda’s lapdog unites everyone around him in mutual dislike.

Today, they laugh as he trails behind Zelda, hand resting on the hilt of his sword despite knowing that he’ll never need to use it. It’s all procedure; he stands guard while Zelda receives the reports she demanded upon departure. Knots, the state of the ship, updates on global affairs. She takes it all in with a dignified nod, but he knows she’s particularly dissatisfied today. Trouble isn’t something you adjust to like you would to a bad smell. The worry hanging on the ship isn’t being brought to light in the daily report, and the captain isn’t saying anything about it. He doesn’t seem to have any intentions to, either.

He talks about the weather and how the ship’s food supply should last them another month and then some. When he finally trails off, apparently done with his report, Zelda waits a beat. Waiting for him to tack on just one comment about the ugly, unseen demon hanging around the deck. But he says nothing.

And Zelda dismisses him.

She turns to Link once the captain’s out of sight, and she’s sporting a mild frown.

“I’m not being paranoid, am I?” she asks. “There’s something odd going on.” Link shakes his head.

 _Everyone has been jumpy since we stopped seeing the shore,_ he signs. _It makes you wonder._

She sighs. “That’s precisely what I’m doing. The silence from the captain only makes me wonder if I have a tie to the problem.”

Link shrugs.

 _Maybe you should stay in your cabin for a few days,_ he suggests, and she scoffs before he can continue on with that thought.

“I’d rather hurl myself over the railing. We’ll nip this in the bud before anything goes awry.”

 _Okay,_ Link says. And he’s partially happy for it, because it’s been so long since he’s been on the offense.

“Keep an ear open for me, would you?” she asks. “Listen to the crew, and see if they give us any snippets into the whole story.”

No one talks when he’s around. He nods anyways.

Then she gives him her usual parting squeeze on the wrist--a ritual they’ve shared since the War Times--and they go separate ways; Zelda calls for the chief officer and Link trots to the far end of the deck, where a few men and women are fiddling with the rigging.

“Pest,” a woman mutters under her breath as he walks by.

Doesn’t matter. He’s working now.

 

* * *

 

The coast has been riddled with odd cases for the past few months. They’re the reason Zelda is traveling, heading to shaken towns in order to provide direct aid and counsel. Link and Zelda are well familiar with beasts--they slaughtered them in mass during the last few wars. But the perpetrators of these crimes--if there are any--seem… Different. More calculative. More inventive. There are stories of sabotaged machinery slaughtering cattle and farmers. Fortresses erected on foothills in the course of one night. Hylians driven to violence after being entranced by strange, seemingly sourceless lights.

They don’t have a name for it, yet.

But it’s not an established enemy and it’s not an ally--it just is what it is.

And not for the first time, Link wonders if it’s following the same line of madness that the crew is following.

They’re edging even further away from their usual behavior, flat-out refusing to stay on deck when they’re not on duty. The captain requests that Zelda’s briefings be held in his quarters for the next few weeks. Link sticks out even further everywhere he goes; the crewmen are picking up on his awkward lurking, or maybe they’re afraid of something else hearing them. They rarely speak at all to each other.

Link opts to spend more time on the deck instead. He wastes daylight watching the deep-green water with a flat expression, and when Zelda questions him on the information he’s gathered, the most he can tell her is that mentioning the problem seems to be taboo.

The lack of hands on deck gives it an advantage the first time it visits.

Link’s on the starboard. He’s watching the water and slowly frying his eyes from the reflections when there’s a dull thud from the other side of the boat. He doesn’t think about it. Wood can be creaky. The boat is rocking from the waves spawned from a few mild gusts of wind and the railing is warm; he’s well on his way to taking an accidental catnap.

But then the sound comes again, this time more distinct.

Knock, knock, knock.

Link backs away from the railing. He glances around, gauging other members’ expressions, but only two others are paying attention, and they’re talking to each other. He catches a snippet of one crew member’s sentence, “--Fairly certain that the ocean floor is three or four miles below us--” he’s saying to his coworker with a furrowed brow before Link is sprinting to the portside.

He rams into the opposite railing which strikes him in the ribs unapologetically, and sure enough, he sees something in the water that breaks the usual stretch of nothing.

A dark spot bumps against the hull, wavering back and forth as it decides whether or not it wants to cling to the ship’s side. It’s big, but not overwhelmingly big; just large enough that Link assumes its height rivals his own. For a moment, he thinks it’s a fish.

In the next moment, he thinks otherwise--because it hurtles at the ship’s side and a terrible, splintering sound rings out, like it’s scratching whatever it can find. And the sound carries on and on and he catches a glimpse of a limb and it makes all the hair on his arms stand on end. There’s no one else close enough to act and nothing on deck he’d feel justified in using, so Link unclips the shield on his back, and he hurls it over the railing like a big, clunky disk.

He waits one second. Two seconds.

Clang.

The dark spot thrashes for a moment, then fades alongside the shield.

There are footsteps racing to meet him, so he turns around, hands already flying as he tries to explain what he’d seen-- _Some kind of waterbeast is out there, it was messing with the hull, I had to do something_ \--but the crowd consists of only crewmen and the second officer, none of which can understand him. His head is whirring incoherently but his hands still move; he says something along the lines of _It must have claws_ before the second officer catches his wrists and steadies him.

“Princess,” she calls over her shoulder. “Come settle out all of…” She gives Link a wary once-over. “This.”

The crowd parts slightly, and Zelda steps through right as the officer drops Link’s hands.

“Link?” she asks.

 _I think I found the source of our problems,_ he tells her. _Some kind of sea creature._

She’s always been good at taking strange news passively, and this time, she responds with a simple blink.

“What makes it a problem?”

_It attacked the hull._

“Could someone check the hull?” she asks the crowd.

No one moves. Link is finally beginning to understand why they don’t tread near the railing.

But Zelda isn’t as cowardly. She huffs, then strides to Link’s side, placing a hand on the banister and leaning a great deal of her weight over the side. Link automatically moves to grab her shoulder, but he doesn’t obstruct her.

After a few heavy seconds, she clicks her tongue. “Ah.”

“Ah?” one of the crewmen repeats.

“There’s a hole in your hull. Right above the waterline.”

A beat of silence.

Someone swears under their breath.

The second officer hurries over for confirmation, and she takes twice as long looking the hull over before facing everyone else.

“It’s bad, but it’s not urgent,” she says to them. “It will become more of a problem when a storm hits and the waterline raises, but we’re expecting clear skies for at least another week.”

“So?” Zelda asks.

“I’ll consult the captain, and we’ll find a volunteer to patch it up before then,” the officer answers. She spares no more formalities, instead opting to push her way through the crowd, concluding the briefing with a curt, “Now get back to work!” Everyone scatters.

Link watches the second officer for a moment, and there’s an idea itching the corner of his brain. He unfurls his fingers. Curls them back into a fist. Repeats the motion one or two more times.

“Link…” Zelda says to his side. She knows what he’s thinking.

Link shoots her a look, takes his fist, and draws a counterclockwise circle over his chest. Then he gives a final half-wave, and chases down the officer.

 

* * *

 

He’s not doing this because he wants redemption or approval. Or rather, he tells himself he’s not.

Public opinion is a finicky thing, and when he was younger, it mattered a lot more to him. People claimed that he was “good” and “brave” and “selfless” but as the fighting went on and the decisions got harder, less black and white, those words held a lot less merit. He doesn’t trust them to define himself anymore because he doesn’t feel like he fills any of the quotas associated with them--he’s done things that weren’t so good, made decisions that weren’t so brave, and his actions can’t be selfless if he did them with self-interests in mind. Still, the people insisted.

But on the other side of those wars, he disproved them.

So no, he’s not asking for redemption or approval.

He’s holding himself accountable for the times where he didn’t act fast enough, and acting _before_ he’s expected to.

Zelda doesn’t like it at all.

She’s selfish in the same way he is, clinging stubbornly to the people she knows will understand her. If he gets pitched into the sea, she’ll be just that much lonelier.

He soothes her with a few lighthearted reminders about how the boat won’t beat him half to death like a Bokoblin could, and the worst the ocean can do is waterlog his clothes. It gets a strained smile. He unbuckles his sword and hands it to her for safe keeping.

The plan is simple. They’re going to lower him down by the hole on a swing-like contraption; he’ll hammer the patch--a wooden cone--into the problem area and do any extra sealing with tar before being raised back up. It’ll take five minutes at least, or twenty minutes at most. The others above will wait on the deck until he’s finished, but otherwise, they’re stuck with their regular duties.

And after their short discussion, they ease him downwards until the underside of the seat grazes the water, putting him right at eye level with the breach. It’s small but distinct. Ragged but purposeful. Link sets the bowl of tar to his side, picks up his hammer, wedges the cone into the breach, and gets to work.

He’s never done boat repairs, obviously, so it’s strange assuming that plugging in the hole with a wooden peg will be enough. Still, the second officer had told him that the wood would soak up water and start acting like a cork when given enough time and humidity. He’ll take her word for it. The fit is clean enough that the tar won’t be necessary, either.

He hammers at the breach until the cone won’t budge any further, on the verge of wrapping things up when something flickers in his periphery. It’s dark, and it’s the only thing in the stretch of sea-green that looks like something that isn’t nothing.

He already has a fairly vivid picture of what it could be, so he jolts, hammer raised and feet perched on the seat, rather than in the water. The dark spot winds back and forth through the water like a snake this time. It winds closer and closer, up until it’s practically beneath him, pressed flush against the hull. He’s close enough to see it reach out, prodding the ship’s side.

Knock, knock, knock.

Just like before.

Then the waves part and there’s a face peering out from the roiling water, its eyes wide and curious as Link stares back.

Her skin is dark purplish-black and her sea-tangled hair clings to her head and shoulders as she places a careful elbow on the edge of Link’s seat without a hint of hesitation; she leans forward as he leans back. His mind is whirring through all the implications and he doesn’t know whether he should attack or not-attack the creature that smiles at him as if he had already been smiling at her.

Her hands move.

She signs to him.

**_Hello._ **

Link hasn’t had anyone sign to him since he left his home all those years ago--the disbelief is a chop to the throat. His hands leave the hammer and cone on the far end of the seat, and he’s quick to sign back:

_What are you?_

She lets out a soft laugh. **_What am I not?_ **

Ugh. _You’re not good at answering questions._

His nerves are flaring so he fires another question out before she can say something else cryptic.

_How do you know how to sign?_

And her sentences look so much more fluid than his; it’s almost like a dance. **_We are centuries old. Knowledge drifts down to us like shells carried away by the tides. We collect, and we learn._ **

Link slowly nods. _And what do you want with this boat?_

**_Your attention._ **

Link sits straighter in his seat, confused.

_Mine, or the whole crew’s?_

**_They don’t understand you, too concerned in the effects of a low tide versus a high tide. A tide is a tide; it can sail your ship, or it can drown you, and that warrants respect._ **

He can’t help but hold his hands to his chest for a moment, mulling over how he should respond. The waves are lapping by his feet, and beneath the slap of water on the hull, he thinks he hears someone humming.

 _I don’t mind disrespect,_ he eventually says.

**_But you mind the weight of your own failures._ **

His head feels weirdly airy.

_I’ll live._

**_I have ways to make the weight lighter._ **

“Oh, Goddess,” Zelda calls belatedly, apparently glancing over the railing for the first time since this conversation had begun. “Don’t speak to her!”

Her voice is faint from afar.

Faint enough to ignore.

 _I won’t learn from the mistakes I don’t carry with me,_ he argues.

 ** _You’ll walk so much further without them, though,_ ** she counters back. **_Away from the shade of a fruitless era, and into the sun. What is a Champion of Light without the sun?_**

_We need something other than a Champion._

**_The sun can burn away what isn’t needed._ _Your worries and busy hands will evaporate away, leaving only--_**

_Yes,_ Link interrupts, thoroughly invested.

“Plug your ears!” a crew member shouts, but it overshoots Link’s attention and sinks right into the sea.

And Link barely understands what’s being saying on a word-to-word basis anymore, too caught up in the gist of Her message instead. Promises of peace and calm thoughts and a world that he won’t have to worry about once he’s stepped away. She doesn’t say how, but it doesn’t matter; he feels like he’s known Her for forever, and She’s capable. She could stand at the feet of Hylia and demand the world, which the Goddess would unabashedly provide.

Zelda’s speaking to him with a sharp, warning tongue--”Link!”--but he’s still edging closer, as if he could hear the words floating from Her palms a little better. Her smile stretches to a grin. It has more teeth than what he would’ve expected, but he grins back. They’re sharing a secret; the kind of secret that punctures Link’s heart like a glorified pin cushion. He wants, and he wants, and he wants.

She holds out a hand.

Link takes it.

Then someone swears from the deck and the water’s so much darker once Link’s beneath its surface and the cold weight of reality is yanking him down to the ocean floor, her eyes glowing an ugly pink that burns only slightly less than the saltwater. She’s still smiling. He experimentally tugs his hand, and her response is to jolt his arm hard enough that the shock squeezes a half-gasp out of him.

Then Link’s first instinct is to panic.

But the second instinct leaps in less than a moment later and rips the first one’s throat out, because panicking will pick up his heart rate and a faster heart rate requires more air and requiring more air when he’s this deep underwater will just kill him faster, so he forces his diaphragm to relax.

He wiggles his feet up and plants it on the side of her ribs before he pushes so hard little black dots start dancing in his periphery. He gets another yank in response--one that makes him lose his footing on her.

Then he tries strong-arming her. Twisting and jolting and kicking until her right arm is bent at an angle that _should_ dislocate her shoulder, but she’s not a Hylian and her bones don’t work the same way his do. She barely notices, and the sunlight from above is fading out like a beacon across a lake swamped in mist, just flecks of warmth shrouded with a promise of something much colder, and much lonelier.

So what he does next is only natural.

He pushes himself close enough that his face grazes her skin, and he clamps down with his teeth.

...That gets a reaction.

She has to let go in order to twist and return the favor but Link is already moving to push himself back upwards and her anger is hitting his face in a bubbling exhale so he puts his hands on whatever part of her is the most grabbable and shoves her downwards and then he kicks like _hell_ but she’s built for the sea and he’s built for the shore so she catches up with a simple stride and drags him back to her level and her teeth are sharper so when she bites what she finds first, she bites unbearably _hard_ and Link writhes.

He nails her in the stomach with a well-timed knee but her teeth are still lodged in the crook of his shoulder so the angle of exit rips up more flesh and his head spins a little but he darts a fist out and socks her right between the eyes before trying to drag his way back to the surface again--and this time, she doesn’t catch him immediately.

There’s a foreboding current licking at his feet though, so he still has to hurry.

He kicks up and he can’t move his shoulder easily but he pulls as hard as he can manage, and the light starts creeping back into his vision right as the black spots from earlier start eating away at it. He’s tired and he’s aching but he isn’t deterred. It doesn’t matter if there’s nothing to grab onto when he gets back to the surface. It doesn’t matter if he’s hundreds of thousands of yards away from the ship. Nothing matters except living through the next thirty seconds. He’s close enough that the surface feels just in reach--he can’t taste air, but he can practically feel it whistling in his windpipe.

Nobody took the time to tell him what drowning feels like, though. So when he pushes against the strain of his diaphragm for the umpteenth time and instead his mouth cracks open and he breathes in water, time goes from a quick sprint to a lazy stroll to an exhausted crawl and all he can think is, ‘Oh.’

And then he can’t move.

He drifts.

He regrets.

He gets harassed by oxygen-starved thoughts.

The lapdog is stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Doomed to stagnate to the point that when crisis hits, he forgets how to do anything besides not move at all.

It frustrates him to no end. To the point that he hopes he dies faster, just so he doesn’t have to stew in his anger. He loves times of peace but he hates how his body isn’t built for them and he hates how the world only wants him around when it’s somehow trying to kill itself and he hates that his only two modes are ‘fight’ and ‘rest’ and he hates that someone (‘someone’ is easier than admitting it was himself) jammed his switch while he wasn’t looking so now he’s perpetually stuck in a terrible in-between and Goddess, hasn’t he done enough monologuing to deserve a tasteful fade to black already?

Apparently not.

Because something grabs his upper arm. Something with claws that dig ever-so-slightly into his skin.

He can’t retaliate while the water shifts to feel less like amber and more like a brick wall, but then his head hits the surface and he’s throwing up everything that collected in his lungs and stomach and before he’s even halfway through his first choppy breath he throws another punch--it catches whatever’s holding him square on the snout, and it crunches like something pliable under his knuckles.

“Ow?” the person gripping his arm says, more confused than hurt.

And finally, Link runs out of things to think.

Unconsciousness hits him like a club to the head.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ever get slapped with the sudden urge to write ~4000 words of indulgence in about a day or two just 'cause you can? ...yeah. that's what happened. i'm trying to get more into the 'stop caring about accuracy!! just try to start and finish something!!' mentality, so this is a fun little impromptu exercise, and i'll be the first to apologize for any weird bits, lol. just havin' fun. 
> 
> i'm off to a place with not much internet connection in about a week and i'll be gone for a while, so this is going to be a race against time to see if i can finish this fic before then; i'm hoping to make this lil project a two-to-three chapter deal, and chapters would be on the lengthier side. so uh. we'll see. 
> 
> now for a few more things:  
> -since i'm typing fast and furiously, sorry for typos/errors! i'll clean 'em when i catch them.  
> -i know there's technically a difference between river and sea zoras in other games, but i'm a baby LOZer with pretty much all my franchise knowledge coming from BOTW, so let's live in ignorant bliss together for a bit, pfft.  
> -lastly, thanks so much for taking the time to read this!


	2. the elephant seal in the room (intermission)

The world drifts to him in bits and pieces, but there aren’t many to collect. He feels the water and he feels the breeze--even in a half-there, half not-there state, he knows he’s still seabound.

The glaring outlier is the fact that someone is grasping his arm. The sheer confusion that causes makes him push hard against the black blanket over his head, fighting to open his eyes, and it takes time. A considerable amount of it, honestly. But he manages.

When he comes to, the moon is hanging sadly overhead, like the overripe fruit from the orchards of Central Hyrule.

Right next to it, two glowing, slit-pupiled eyes are looking down at him.

Link doesn’t know how to react, so he doesn’t. He watches them right back.

The stand-off lasts for all of three seconds before the stranger makes some kind of noise--Link can’t tell if it’s disappointed, pleased, or something else entirely. The eyes disappear--the stranger must’ve been looking over their shoulder--and Link feels the current tug alongside him. They’re moving. The stranger is dragging him somewhere, albeit gently dragging him.

“I was wondering if you were going to come to,” they say. “It would be a shame going through all that trouble with Ganon just to pass in your sleep.”

Link goes from having one question to having many, many questions. He takes a leaf out of Zelda’s book, and slowly blinks instead of exploding.

The stranger keeps talking.

“I know Hylians have a bit of a resilient streak, but the odds weren’t quite for or against you this time; the bite wound was particularly bad, but the seawater likely cleaned it out before anything could fester. Still, your people are awfully air-reliant and--”

They pause. Glance back at him again.

“You are hearing me, correct?”

Link hesitates. Then he tentatively raises an arm out of the water. He makes a fist, and tilts it up and down, as if he were nodding.

If the first creature could sign, maybe this one can as well? It’s already speaking Hylian.

But the shadow of the stranger just shakes their head.

“I don’t know the meaning of that word, friend. My apologies. But I’ll assume that in some form, that was a ‘yes’.”

They start moving again.

So Link lets his arm slump back into the water, and it makes a defeated splash. And his next thought is to treat the stranger the same way he’d treat members of the crew back at the ship, playing a bastardized game of charades to get his point across.

He moves to drag himself into a more upright pose, only to find that the bitemark hurts more out of the water, rather than in, and then he’s scrambling to reposition himself so his shoulder doesn’t feel like it’s full of fire ants, but putting it back in the saltwater after it’s had a taste of air is also aggravating. He ends up accidentally dunking himself under with enough force that the stranger turns all the way around just to readjust Link to his original angle.

“Patience,” they say. “It’s not my strong suit either, but it will pay off if you trust me.”

Link doesn’t trust them, but also, he doesn’t not trust them. He’s too tired and apathetic to make any judgements.

The stranger picks up their pace a bit following that, and after making himself dizzy from watching the moonlight bounce off the waves at his unfortunate angle, Link decides keeping his eyes closed might be better for him in the long haul. He hears snippets from under his company’s breath. Half-thoughts like, “I spotted it last week,” and, “no, this is a little too far north.” There are no dots to connect. He’s lost both figuratively and literally.

He’s managed to lull himself into a half-daze when he feels off-puttingly large hands readjusting him. Link cracks open a questioning eye and gets the same eerie slit-pupiled gaze from before. One hand draws Link’s arms away from his torso, into a lazy “T”. The other separates his legs to around Link’s shoulder width. The hands shift again, now settling to support Link’s back. The motion feels strangely careful.

“You can float on your own, right?” the stranger asks him.

Link nods.

“Wonderful. This will only take a few minutes,” they say. And then the hands are gone, and Link is floating alone in the middle of the ocean.

Maybe he’s had too much stress today--the realization doesn’t frighten him nearly as badly as he thought it would.

He keeps his nose above water while the moon is wavering with the waves, and he counts to three hundred and ninety-six uninterrupted before something bubbles up to his side, and the stranger’s head is breaking the surface. They’ve brought something with them.

“A lifeboat from a voyager a couple hundred meters below,” they tell him. “It sunk with the main vessel, but it’s still in good condition. If I just manage to--” the boat is hauled entirely out of the water bottom-first, and its contents pour out violently. “--There. And then--” with a slight grunt, they flip the boat rightside up, then place it down. It rocks dangerously before balancing itself out.

Link makes a quick note to himself:

Do not anger the stranger. They are ridiculously strong.

Link doesn’t have much to say when he gets shifted over to the boat’s side, but when the stranger puts their hands under Link’s armpits and starts to pull him upwards, his first reaction is to automatically protest. He doesn’t push them off or outright refuse, but he can’t help but squirm reluctantly, feeling a bit child-like. And although Link stays silent, the stranger quickly drops their hold, giving him a little more space.

“Ah, my apologies. I should have asked.” Their shadow inches a few feet away, then places a hand down to keep the boat steady. “I’ll stay over here, and you can do what you need.”

Okay. So Link isn’t stuck in the company of a brick wall. That’s good.

He pulls himself into a hunched-over treading position, and sizes up the boat.

Its sides are fairly steep, reinforced with metal and the rotted remnants of fenders. It looks manageable, if not a little uncomfortable--but that’s disregarding his state, though. Climbing up will be a challenge with an injured shoulder and tiredness that seems to run bone-deep.

Already dreading this process, he hooks his arms over the side of the boat. He tries to haul himself upwards, feeling the muscles in his back working overtime, but in the end, it’s like running down a flight of stairs and then missing the last step. Something in his right shoulder isn’t cooperating in the slightest. He only makes it up high enough to feel the wind chill on his back, but he can’t swing to wrap his ankle over the side like he had originally planned. He reluctantly slides back into the water.

He takes a moment to catch his breath. Then he tries again. And again. And the stranger says nothing, keeping a patient hand propped on the front of the boat. It’s only after the sixth time that Link swallows whatever pride is holding him back, and he’s so tired that he doesn’t even think or make some kind of gesture for help. He just wheezes out a broken “can’t” that rubs his throat so raw he wonders if it’s possible to suffocate on oxygen.

The stranger doesn’t comment. They come back to Link’s side, but their approach is different this time. Probably because they’ve noticed the shoulder problem.

“Do you think you can stand?”

Link grunts.

“Stand on my hands, and I’ll raise you up so you can climb in.”

So he stands on the makeshift step the stranger provides, clings to the side, and gracelessly slumps into the boat. He doesn’t land on his bad side, which is a small blessing.

Moving at this point is a step-by-intentional-step process; he has to think through where he puts his hands, and how he will get his legs beneath him, and when it comes to settling his weight down in a seat, the effort it takes makes his lungs hammer against his ribs. It’s torture. It’s an unfamiliar kind of pain he can’t enjoy, not even nostalgically.

As he’s trying to catch his breath, the side of the boat tilts towards the water. The stranger doesn’t haul themself into the boat—they’re too composed for a word that blunt. They toss themself over the side of the railing, and land square on what Link thinks are their feet. He doesn’t move to accommodate them. He doesn’t move at all.

They aren’t put off by the lack of a reception, quick to seat themself on the bench across from Link. The lighting bounces off their skin and refracts into a silvery sheen that makes it easy enough to distinguish them from their surroundings, and for the first time since he’d woken up, Link really looks at the stranger.

They’re not like the creature that dragged him under. They’re tall and royal red with two rows of jagged teeth and eyes that drill into Link’s sockets with just how unapologetically they shine in the dark. Link looks at the stranger, and he doesn’t see much Hylian in them at all.

The stranger grins at him.

“Now that the elephant seal in the room is out of the way--” he holds out a hand.

“I’m Prince Sidon.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, hey! sorry for the delay in an update; i got really busy with prepping for my trip and couldn’t post anything fresh before leaving! but i managed to peck up a nice snippet that i finished up tonight—i’m stuck on mobile for the next month, so i can’t say whether or not i’ll update again until july... autocorrect is a nightmare, lol. but i wanted to put something up as a special thanks for all the nice comments you all have left; i’m not able to respond so well atm, but they mean a lot to me :’^)
> 
> because i’m doing this all on my phone and can’t use a desktop to check the state of the union, i’m hoping things don’t get wonky with the formatting. same goes for spelling/errors! i’ll do what i can, though.
> 
> thanks for reading!


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